Servant: The Dark God Book 1 by John D. Brown Read Free Book Online Page A

would be others here shortly. And together they would dispatch this monster. All Barg had to do was keep his courage. Keep it like he’d done this morning and not run away.
    The creature strode on as if nothing had happened. It plucked the spear out of its chest, like a man plucking straw from his tunic, and flung it into the ashes.
    Foss surged forward to the edge of the coals, but Barg took a step backward. He glanced at the homes; nobody had emerged. It was just him and his sword.
    The creature strode forward.
    Gods, but it was huge. Barg took another step back, and then he turned and fled.
    Foss stayed back. He snarled, barked, then let out a huge yelp. A moment later Barg heard the dog running. Barg glanced back. Foss was stretched out, galloping for his life. Behind him, the creature loped after them both, a thin line of fire burning up one of its sides.
    Foss passed Barg and ran toward the house. Barg turned and realized he was running the wrong way: he was running away from the other houses and help. But to go back to the houses meant he would have to run back toward the beast.
    Then the door to his house opened. The firelight shone into the night, silhouetting his wife standing in the doorway.
    “No,” he yelled. “Go back!” But he knew it was too late. The creature surely would have seen her, which meant that now, even if Barg were to change his direction, the monster might not follow him.
    “Get the children!” he yelled as he ran into the yard.
    “Barg?” his wife said in alarm. Then her face twisted in horror and she backed into the house.
    The creature chuffed behind him.
    Barg spun around, holding his sword at the ready.
    The thing stood not ten paces away. The fire had risen and burned its shoulder and head.
    Courage, Barg told himself. All he needed was a bit of courage.
    There was movement in the village. Men began to shout, but they ran the wrong way. They ran to the smith’s.
    “To me!” he cried. “To me!”
    The creature opened its mouth wide and drew in a hoarse breath. It turned its head toward the door of the house.
    Barg thought of his daughter, his son, his excellent wife just behind the door. “No, you won’t,” said Barg. “You filthy abomination, you’ll feel my steel first!” Then he let out a yell, and, for the second time today, charged, his blade held high.
    The creature turned back to face him.
    Barg brought his blade down in a cut that would have cleaved a man from collar bone to belly.
    But the creature simply grabbed the blade in midswing, reached out with its free, rough hand, and took Barg by the face.
    Barg struggled in its stony grasp. And then he was slipping, twisting, falling into another place entirely.
    * * *
    Miles away, Sugar crouched in the moon shadows at the edge of the forest and looked across a river at the farmstead of Hogan the Koramite. The man she knew as Horse.
    “Is the water deep?” whispered Legs.
    “I don’t know,” said Sugar.
    “Do you think he will help?”
    “This is where Mother sent us,” said Sugar. But in her heart she knew the chances of him helping them were slim. If Horse harbored them, he put his whole family at risk. But if he delivered them to the hunt, he, even as a Koramite, would earn a fortune.
    “I think I’m wicked,” said Legs.
    “You’re not wicked,” said Sugar.
    “I should have listened to the wisterwife.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Sometimes, when I held the charm, she would call to me like I was lost.”
    Sugar looked at her brother. She’d never heard of such a thing. “She called to you?”
    “In my mind. I could see her. She was beautiful. And sometimes I could see something else with her. Something made of earth, dark and wild and . . .”
    Sugar waited while Legs found the words.
    “Something in her voice,” he said, “it was horrible and wonderful. Every time I heard her, fear stabbed me because I didn’t want someone to think I was like old Chance. I didn’t want to be mad and